Love/Hate's Patrick on Packy's gruesome murder scene: “It didn’t freak me out, I thought it was the right thing to be done."

John Connors has won an army of fans for his portrayal of bomb-maker Patrick in Love/Hate

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Love/Hate star John Connors has revealed he loved filming his character’s gruesome murder of a hitman.

John, who plays pipe bomb maker Patrick, said shooting the chilling killing did not freak him out at all.

The Coolock native and settled Traveller blew audiences away with his spine-tingling performance in Sunday’s episode of the hit series.

John takes failed assassin Packy prisoner and gets his revenge by slitting his throat but not before delivering a fearsome speech explaining the thought process behind his actions.

Speaking about shooting the scene, he said: “It didn’t freak me out, I thought it was the right thing to be done.

“The character had just lost a son and in the Travelling community your son is like the heir to the throne.

Patrick shares a tender moment with his young son Brandon (Image: RTE/Bernard Walsh)

“And he’d lost his son already and was still grieving for that son and then to almost lose a son again, I don’t think he was ever going to let him away with that. But, he’s not a sociopath, he has a conscience.

“And taking a man’s life is a big deal to him, so in that scene you see him thinking out loud and explaining to the other character Packy that this is why I’m going to kill you.

“That’s why he doesn’t just blow his head off. And that’s why I loved the scene, me and Stuart [Carolan] talked about it, they did it in such a real way, to make it a big deal to take someone off this earth instead of doing it coolly and putting a bullet in someone’s head.

“To show how dark that is, to show how dark murder is.”

A brutal ending..Patrick slit Packy's throat after Ado recruited him to carry out the hit

John revealed the Travelling community had also reacted amazingly to his turn in the gangland show but admitted he has no interest in becoming a celebrity.

The 24-year-old Dubliner said: “They know I did a decent job.

“People are reaching out and saying it was great, it was so real and that kind of stuff, so that’s nice.

“It made their Sunday night, so if you can make someone’s Sunday night you’re doing a job for them.”

Love/Hate's Patrick holds son Brandon after he was shot in Sunday's explosive episode

The actor told how he was mobbed by fans at a concert in the capital last week.

He said: “I went to a UB40 gig and I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for to be honest.

" When I think about it now I was pretty naive. But I walked down the side of the Olympia, the fella took me ticket and he just looked at me and said, ‘You should have worn a hat’.

“I’d say there was four or five hundred people between me and the door, which was about 20 feet away, and it took me more than an hour to get there.

“It’s like a chain reaction, when you take one selfie, someone goes ‘who’s yer man taking the selfie, ah it’s yer man’.

"Everyone’s drunk so they have no self- consciousness, they don’t care they’ll approach you, and hug you and pull your hair and the shirt was even pulled off me.

“I thought it had ended when I got inside and they ended up putting me in the VIP area which is one little nice thing about being recognised.

“They put in me there because they thought it’d be quieter and I literally took a selfie with everyone in the VIP area.

“I was trying to enjoy UB40 who were great, but I didn’t get the full experience. It was a lesson well learned. I walk around with a hat now.”

The Love Hate cast, Charlie Murphy, John Connors, Aoibhinn McGinnity, Tom Vaughan Lawlor and Laurence Kinlan as Season Five is about to hit our screens (Image: Andres Poveda)

Writer Stuart Carolan is renowned for his preparation and John revealed he spent a lot of time with him discussing life in the Travelling community.

He added: “From day one before he wrote anything we sat down and we talked for about 10 hours. I went home and he went home and he rang me and it was like that for a while.

“As he was writing the episodes he would ring me and we’d chat for a day sometimes.

“He wanted to nail the whole culture and have it so authentic that when Travellers look at it they go, ‘yeah, that’s real’. He wasn’t concerned with anything other than that.

“He told me when I’m on set and something isn’t right, say it.

“I can’t take any credit for writing it, it’s amazing. Stuart had a very clear idea of who the character was.

“He had some great ideas. He does that with a lot of the characters, they have a lot of input.”

And John said Stuart hit the nail on the head with series five of the RTE show.

He added: “There’s a lot more going on than the Nidge thing, I think the last episode showed that – the situation with his son, the identity problem his son was having.

“I have a lot of little cousins who are half Traveller, half settled and the kid who plays my son, he’s my cousin and he’s half Traveller half settled and he has the same thing going on.

“And it’s that identity thing, being made uncomfortable about being a Traveller, or you’re supposed to be ashamed to be a Traveller.

“To me that’s a tragedy that any kid would have to go through that, that they would have to hide their identity or change who they are. That storyline really hit home.”

Nowhere to hide: Patrick realises his time is up (Image: JOHN DARDIS)

After his star turn in Love/Hate John is in demand and is now working on his next project, a feature film he penned himself and will star in.

He explained: “I’m working on something I wrote called Cardboard Gangsters and we nearly have all the funding, so we’re going to shoot that next summer.

“It’s about a gang of young men who are sick of being on the dole and having no money and fascinated by gangster life and gangsterism.

“The only people they respect are gangsters, they have all the money and respect of the community, they have the power. So they get into drugs for those reasons, the glorified lifestyle, and find themselves clashing with the kingpin of the area.

“It’s not done in a Love/Hate kind of way, it’s smaller, set in a council estate.

“I’m in it, that’s the great thing about writing your own stuff.

“Barry Keoghan who played Wayne the cat killer and Stephen Clinch who plays Noelie Hughes are also signed up along with Damien Dempsey.

“We have funding from BAI and TV3. We’re still trying to get the last scratch.”